In our last lesson we watched the video 'The history of editing' by John Hess. In this video, he goes through how filmmakers began to use cutting to impact the scene. From this video I was able to learn many things. For example, the first ever screening took place in the basement grand cafe in Paris in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers. The magician George Melies who owned and operated the theatre took inspiration from this and wanted to start making his own films. Melies bought an English made projector called an animatograph. He was able to reverse the mechanics and therefore create his own camera to film with. From here on he started making and showing his own films as part of his magician show. Through this, he discovered the jump cut which he used to crest reappearing and disappearing effects in his films. In the making of his films, he also created the fade in and fade out, overlapping dissolves and stop motion photography. However, Melies never moved the angle of his camera so the viewer always seems to have to the perfect theatre seat.
Another upcoming director at this time who was beginning to develop the progress of cutting. This person was Edwin S Porter who was originally a vitascope projectionalist. He joined the Edison manufacturing head of production for Edison's skylight studio in 1901. He served as the editors director and cameraman when filming 'Life of an American fireman'. Porter also filmed the famous film 'The great train robbery'. In this film, Porter interestingly begins to cut straight between scenes without using fades or dissolves and without letting the scene reach its logical end.
In this sense filmmakers were beginning to see editing' ability to compress time. I have added the link to this video below:
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